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The example of Chrome being written in less time than Firefox took to add multi-process support is interesting. Yes, changing a deeply held assumption in a matu
by abainbridge 8y ago
The example of Chrome being written in less time than Firefox took to add multi-process support is interesting. Yes, changing a deeply held assumption in a mature code-base is a nightmare. But, Firefox continued to make releases while they were gradually making multi-proccess support happen. Starting again would have been suicide for them.
- jacobush 8y agoAnd they already did start over once, and it almost was suicide. Instead of gradually fixing Netscape Navigator 4.7, we waited years and years for Firefox 1.0 In the end, it went pretty well and it's impossible to know what would have happened if they would have decided to continue on the Navigator track, but Netscape Navigator reached basically 0% market share until Firefox was released.
- kalleboo 8y agoTo be specific, it was 5 years between Netscape Communicator 4.7 (1997) and Mozilla 1.0 (2002)
- agumonkey 8y agoI wonder if there are papers on how to restructure large systems. And if modular analysis can reduce the cost of deep+late refactoring.
- bumblebritches5 8y agoIt's not accurate tho. Chrome is based on WebKit.